Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Here in the UK, I've never seen buffalo used as a verb, so the buffalo sentence has never seemed all that clever to me.

I've always preferred the publican's complaint - "This sign is painted wrong, you missed the spaces between Dog and and, and and and Duck" - because it doesn't rely on unmarked compounds like police-police or Buffalo-buffalo no-one uses outside linguistic puzzles :)



American here. Never heard anyone use “buffalo” as a verb either outside of this puzzle.

“Police police” (as well as extensions) is reasonable enough:

“Internal Affairs is like the police police.”

“So are their supervisors like, the police police police?”


It has a valid usage that’s somewhat archaic. I’ve run into the term in literature and old TV.


We should name a town Police.

Perhaps if you were from Buffalo where the Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo you'd be more receptive to the idea.


You could tack on several more if the fragment being corrected is "...conjunctions like butandandandor..." so that they are missing spaces between but and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and or, and commas would help immensely.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: